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I said: “No, Paley is.”
“Boy,” he said, “Nobody in our shop knew that.”
And Bob [Robert A.] Lovett, who was on the board, from Brown Brothers, Harriman, told me one day--he said, “You know, in the street they think you're calling the shots.”
So I rode with it. I guess I would have been happy to have been CEO, but it wouldn't have changed the--with Paley's ownership of stock and with the relationship that had been built up, unless he became incapacitated, it wouldn't have made any difference, because I would have deferred a lot of questions to him and would have reached for a continuing relationship. I think I'm being honest when I say that, because we sort of grew up together, night and day, for all those years. I didn't do anything but work at CBS.
And then, of course, well after I'd retired, little by little, as he had trouble with successors-- you know four of them were dismissed and one of them died, but I think died in large measure because of Paley. But as he was having trouble finding solutions to his own burdens, he began calling me and asking me for advice on this and advice on that. And little by little we inched back together again. Then there was a book--I guess maybe Halberstam--some book that attacked him. Attacked me, too. Attacked CBS.
I wrote a very strong piece to David [Halberstam], which I didn't show to Paley, but he did see it later, in which I said that we had our differences, but we had only one objective, which was to make CBS the best god-damned broadcasting group in the world. It was about as genuine an expression as I think I could offer. And I think I said as much at his
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